I am a principled woman. I am also a Texan. Those are probably not mutually exclusive. Therefore, when I flip my calendar to the month of March, I also flip my seasons to Spring.
Here's the problem: we have lived in sub-arctic cities for the last 5 years of our lives. Boston, Harbin, Qinhuangdao... It's ridiculous, really. I hate the cold. Not just hate, but have an abhorrence, an aversion, a loathing of sorts. (side note: I just used thesaurus.com to look up 'hate' and I'll tell you the truth, the word 'frost' came up in my list. SEE, it's not just me.).
I'm going to tell you that this principal has betrayed me many times, one of those times being today. It snowed about 4 inches yesterday. And here's one of the 6 million differences between living in China and living in the US-you don't go from a warm house, to a warm car, to a warm grocery store. You go from a sometimes warm house to a freezing outside, to a freezing market, to a freezing pick up of the kids from school. Did I say that I was cold today? But did that stop me...no. I refused to put on the long underwear and I took a deep breath before leaving the house. And I prayed. Out loud. For a long time.
Here's the other thing, last month when I was wearing said long underwear, I realized that I hadn't shaved in a really long time and that my long underwear was rubbing my leg hairs and that hurt. My hubs had talked about this phenomena and honestly, there was some mocking coming from my side of the bed.
Note to self: don't mock. It can come back to bite you. And it did, when my long underwear were pulling on my leg hairs. Later on that week, my daughter asked why my legs looked like Daddy's.
March to me means laying on a blanket at the park, listening to Sheryl Crow (the last time I actually got to lay down at a park and listen to music was in high school and we listened to Sheryl Crow and the Eagles incessantly on our tape players). It also means wearing skirts, cheap flip flops from Old Navy and eating shaved iced.
But not now. Not for me. And probably not tomorrow either.
